Yesterday, as always, we arrived early at our STAE office in Maliana to check what our assignments would be for the day. Unfortunately, the work has been slow for these past few days since voter registration finished. Well, actually, voter registration, meaning the time for people to come and register for their electoral cards or change their existing ones due to change of address or because their cards may be damaged, may be over but apparently there is a national shortage of cards so we have to patiently wait for more cards to be delivered all the way from Singapore in order to process all the registration requests, but anyways, on with the story...
So to resume, yesterday, we arrive at our office in STAE which is in the District Admnistrator's compound. We share a meeting hall with the DA and usually STAE staff is in charge of cleaning it everyday since we use it more often. Well, yesterday when the doors linking the office to the hall were opened we encountered a pretty disturbing sight. On the floor there lay a dead bird in a pool of blood with a string tied to its neck!!!! It was actually a very pretty bird, with blue wings and a white chest which made it all the more sad. The most distrubing part of this though is the string...if there had been no string one could presume that the bird came in through the window and then having failed in its attempt to leave the hall collapsed from exhaustion or simple heart attack but the mere fact that it had a string around its neck means that it either belonged to someone and it escaped but this still wouldn't explain its death in the hall of the DA...
Timorese people, although extremely catholic, still believe in some forms of animism. They believe that if there is a problem in a village, ie. someone is ill or a teenager is in trouble or something of the sort, you can understand whether the problem will go away by opening a dog and checking its entrails. If its entrails are good then the problem will go away, however, if their entrails happen to be rotten it means the problem will stay and a more drastic solution is needed...no wonder most dogs here are afraid to come near people!
For celebrations it is also tradition to sacrifice pigs or chickens. Luckily I have yet to be invited to such celebrations, I don't think my stomach or heart could take it to be honest but some of my colleagues have had the 'privilege' to see these sacrifices...Could you imagine if they had done something similar when the foreign dignitaries came for the celebration of the retoration of independence!?! Now that would have been a sight!
I brought up animism because, just maybe, in my wildest imagination, I'm thinking the bird can be a sign or a warning, perhaps, from one of the political parties to STAE, to watch their backs during the election, wouldn't that be something! Or maybe I've just been reading too many Agatha Christie books, but all the same, it makes you wonder...
So to resume, yesterday, we arrive at our office in STAE which is in the District Admnistrator's compound. We share a meeting hall with the DA and usually STAE staff is in charge of cleaning it everyday since we use it more often. Well, yesterday when the doors linking the office to the hall were opened we encountered a pretty disturbing sight. On the floor there lay a dead bird in a pool of blood with a string tied to its neck!!!! It was actually a very pretty bird, with blue wings and a white chest which made it all the more sad. The most distrubing part of this though is the string...if there had been no string one could presume that the bird came in through the window and then having failed in its attempt to leave the hall collapsed from exhaustion or simple heart attack but the mere fact that it had a string around its neck means that it either belonged to someone and it escaped but this still wouldn't explain its death in the hall of the DA...
Timorese people, although extremely catholic, still believe in some forms of animism. They believe that if there is a problem in a village, ie. someone is ill or a teenager is in trouble or something of the sort, you can understand whether the problem will go away by opening a dog and checking its entrails. If its entrails are good then the problem will go away, however, if their entrails happen to be rotten it means the problem will stay and a more drastic solution is needed...no wonder most dogs here are afraid to come near people!
For celebrations it is also tradition to sacrifice pigs or chickens. Luckily I have yet to be invited to such celebrations, I don't think my stomach or heart could take it to be honest but some of my colleagues have had the 'privilege' to see these sacrifices...Could you imagine if they had done something similar when the foreign dignitaries came for the celebration of the retoration of independence!?! Now that would have been a sight!
I brought up animism because, just maybe, in my wildest imagination, I'm thinking the bird can be a sign or a warning, perhaps, from one of the political parties to STAE, to watch their backs during the election, wouldn't that be something! Or maybe I've just been reading too many Agatha Christie books, but all the same, it makes you wonder...
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